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Puddle Review

Puddle was a game entered into the GDC 2010 Independent Games Festival in the student division, and it ended up being one of the winners. It initially began as a project of six students from the French videogame school ENJMIN, from there it was picked up for further development by Neko Entertainment and published by Konami. In the game you must guide a puddle of liquid from the start to its targeted destination. You don’t actually move the fluid itself, but the game world by tilting it either left or right.

Pros:

Art Style: Puddle has the art style of a masterpiece painting in which that both of them are beautifully crafted. You will be moving and protecting liquid in a range of different environments from a backyard, to a lab, and even into the human body. All of these have amazing detail and you may catch yourself looking at the environments and backgrounds instead of watching where you liquids are going.

Challenge in Simplicity: The game has such a simple concept, make your way through obstacles to the end of the level while protecting your liquid. It could be water, herbicide, miracle grow, or even nitro glycerin and all of them behave differently.

Whining Feature: At various times in the game you will earn the ability to use a whine. If you get stuck on a level and just can’t beat it (which will most likely happen) you can persevere or you can use a whine to skip that level. This is a great feature to use in a puzzle game as if people get stuck for too long they may stop playing the game.

Music and Sound Effects: The music of the game is calm and soothing and the sound effects only add to the ambiance of the environments. If you are moving through a perilous part of the level the music speeds up and adds a sense of intensity and urgency to whatever the level has you doing at that time.

Cons:

Difficulty: Puddle is a very challenging game and it may get you frustrated at times. Your liquid may separate at times and the camera will follow the smaller part which could cause you to lose the larger part. If you lose too much liquid then the level will end and you will have to deal with the long drawn out loading screens.

Loading Screens: The loading screens of the game are annoying because of how long they take. If you are stuck on a level and failing it over and over the long wait time between the failure and the time you can restart.

Replay Value: Puddle has a very lengthy single-player mode, but other than going back to get higher scores and medals on levels there isn’t much replay value when you beat the game. There is a lab mode that lets you play with the physics of the game but it isn’t very fleshed out.

In Conclusion:

If you combine the challenge of the levels with the ambiance that the art style and sound effects bring you get a great game. Konami was very smart when they decided to publish the game and for only 800 msp the game is a steal and I would recommend it to any fan of the puzzle game genre.